leaving
by on rooftops
Summary: "I'm altogether not a very good person, and I imagine I'm a bad person to love." — Sirius/Remus, past Remus/Regulus


**Disclaimer**: I do not own _Harry Potter._

**A/N: **There are so many things I should have been doing instead of writing this, but I did none of them. This is listed as Sirius/Remus/Regulus, and it is, but the Regulus is past Regulus so it's mostly Sirius/Remus angst. There's some violence and some swearing and about as much yelling as you'd expect. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

leaving

It is three o'clock in the morning and Remus has his thumb in the air. He's blocking the moon—small and distant tonight, the very tip of a fingernail hung high above the Astronomy Tower. It looks so unimportant, so inconsequential, but it is caught in Remus's veins. He can feel the moon, knows when it's waxing and when it's waning by the strength of his pulse, even during long overcast weeks.

He hears footsteps on the stone staircase and lowers his hand. To be caught trying to smudge the moon out of existence is more than a bit sad. Although he knows Sirius would understand the urge, if they were speaking to each other at the moment.

"Moony?"

Or, if Remus were speaking to Sirius. Over the last several weeks Sirius has proven that he has no qualms about speaking to Remus.

"Moony, come on." Sirius drops on the floor beside him, all long boy-limbs and angles. "I'm sorry."

It isn't as if Remus had ever expected—or even wanted—Snape to like him. It's just that Remus really had not wanted Snape to look at him the way he does now, with dread edged in disgust and distaste and also quite a bit of fear. To dislike Severus Snape is sometimes easy; to pity him is much easier; to be hated by him is the simplest thing in the world; but for him to hold such a devastating secret is dangerous, sickening. And Sirius had handed it to him; he had unearthed the wild werewolf for Snape, had stripped Remus bare: It had been Sirius who broke Remus's heart. A surprising thing, as Remus hadn't believed his heart was capable of breaking.

"I really am. Very sorry." Sirius sounds sincere as he leans sideways and nudges Remus with his shoulder. Remus doesn't move, not even to sway out of Sirius's way. "Won't you say anything?"

"You are a fucking idiot," Remus says, pronouncing the words carefully. He means for them to come out normal, but they catch hold of a growl in his voice box and spill into the air rolling over each other, low and terrible.

Sirius shivers beside him. "Do you hate me?"

Hate is such a strange emotion. Hate is the currency of the Blacks, of many pureblood families, but Remus doesn't even know how it feels. He doesn't even feel it for the werewolf who bit him, although he probably ought to. When he's a wolf Remus still searches for that man's scent, raises his muzzle hungry to find strains of him in the wind. When he's a wolf, Remus wants to fight him, to draw blood. But as a human, Remus thinks of him and feels sad and resigned. And those emotions are nowhere near the vitriolic emptiness he associates with hate.

And so of course he doesn't hate Sirius, the thought is ludicrous. He is still not speaking to Sirius, but he cannot hate him. He's angry and hurt and strangely brokenhearted, but he doesn't want Sirius to die. He doesn't think of Sirius with a blur of orange around him, doesn't feel ill at the mention of his name, doesn't clench his fists with the desire to sink werewolf teeth and claws beneath his skin, to tear him raw. Hate is an odd and empty thing; Remus has none of it.

"Nod if you hate me." Sirius has his head turned to face Remus. Remus does not turn to look at him, because if he does he might need to say something, and he's afraid the something will come out as a howl.

"So you don't, then? That's a relief."

Not for a lack of trying, Remus wants to tell him. The night before he had envisioned a glorious fight between the two of them; a fight in which Remus's human hands beat Sirius swollen and bloody, a fight which left Sirius crying in the corner, tears and snot turning his face shiny. In his head, Remus came out of it unscathed. In actuality, the imaginary fight left a sour taste in Remus's mouth, and an unfurling growth of guilt in his lungs made it difficult for him to breathe. He is tired of himself, of how he feels about Sirius—he can't even imagine hurting Sirius without feeling bad about it, and Sirius can hurt him without a second thought. Can hurt him without even realizing he's doing it.

It's this resistance to hurting Sirius that has allowed Remus to hold on to his anger for so long; half a month has passed since he's last spoken to Sirius normally. Remus can't imagine feeling normal around Sirius ever again. If they could just have that fight—if Remus could just hurt Sirius back—if he could understand why Sirius did what he did—if any of those could happen, or all of them, then Remus would forgive his friend. But none of them have, and Sirius has apologized and apologized but has not explained, and so Remus thinks of hitting him but cannot, and he thinks of biting him and then vomits, and he gnaws at the inside of his cheek with the smallness of the moon and an impatience for its fullness. Maybe as a werewolf this will all make more sense.

Sirius waits for what must feel like a long time. "If you don't hate me, then what's the point of the silent treatment? You'll forgive me eventually, so why not do it now? And I've learned my lesson, I swear. I know I was really really dumb."

The imagined fight of the previous night is all that keeps Remus from hitting Sirius. Guilt drawn from a real fight would undoubtedly be crippling. Instead of lodging his fist in Sirius's mouth, Remus stands and turns toward the staircase.

"Moony," Sirius whines, and that is really it.

"Stop it." The words hang in the air between them, tiny monosyllabic disasters. Remus walks down the stairs without waiting for a response.

:::

Remus keeps going down until he finds an empty classroom in the dungeons, near the Potions classroom and not too far from Slytherin. He knows that he is tempting fate, maybe even forcing it, but Sirius is acting apologetic, which means that he cannot know that he had a reason to send Snape after Remus, and that makes Remus feel equal parts guilty and angry. The dungeons compound the guilt and alleviate the anger.

He sits on the desk at the front of the room—what would be the professor's desk, if the room were still being used—and lets his legs swing as he watches the door. He isn't waiting long.

"Why aren't you and Sirius talking?"

Regulus looks like a thicker and shorter version of Sirius, with tamer hair and eyes that burn a little darker. In the beginning of the fall term, Remus would have described Regulus as perfect. Now, the perfection of the younger boy is undermined by the way he's skirting around the edges of the room, gaze stuck on Remus but body everywhere else.

"It's none of your business." Remus hates sounding like a child, but he often does around Regulus. The other boy is two years younger, but he has an aristocratic sense of self that leaves Remus scrambling to right himself for hours after their meetings.

"Isn't it, though?" Regulus finally settles on a desk at the far end of the room, the one nearest the door. Remus feels dislocated, like a professor scolding a delinquent student, and he shakes his head, denying Regulus's assumption while clearing residual discomfort.

"It's not about that. He still doesn't know about that." Remus doesn't think he knows, anyway. It is possible, he supposes, that Sirius has worked it out, figured out that much of the time Remus claimed to be studying in September and October he had actually spent with Regulus. But Remus cannot imagine that Sirius wouldn't react to such a revelation loudly and violently.

"Are you sure?" Regulus asks, eyebrows arched. Remus used to run his thumbs over those, when they lay on Regulus's bed in the middle of the afternoon, locking and silencing charms providing them a few moments of mostly guiltless peace.

"As sure as I can be." Remus picks at his thumbnail. "Why, has he said something to you?"

"You know Sirius doesn't speak to me." His tone is an accusation, as if Remus has purposefully hurt him.

"Well, why are you worried, then?"

"Because," Regulus leaned back, head tilted to stare up at the ceiling, the words coming slow and thoughtful, "I've been trying to work out what would cause such a lasting rift in your precious little group, and what went on with us was the only thing I could think of."

"You don't know everything, Regulus." Remus knows the weight of lies, and he can feel all of the ones they've told holding them together, a center of gravity they're both tied to, but he can also feel the one he's told, the one that beats with his heart, the one that separates him from everyone he's ever known, aside from the Marauders. The combination of these lies has become an insistent push-pull tandem, an odd sensation of disconnect—when he's with Sirius and Peter and James, even before this mess with Snape, even after he ended things in October, he feels as if he ought to be with Regulus, and when he's with Regulus, he can feel the others moving above him in the castle.

"No, I am well aware of that, Lupin." Regulus has grey eyes that have watched Remus sleep. Regulus has seen Remus's scars, but hasn't asked about them. Regulus has kissed him, has tasted his skin, has shouted at him and screamed at him and told him he needed to choose a side. Regulus liked him, possibly still likes him; Remus knows that, because Remus liked Regulus, certainly still likes him, despite everything. "I just wanted to be sure I wasn't going to be fighting off your guard dog anytime soon." The words would be scornful if they didn't ache with hurt. Remus feels an echo of pity for Regulus—caught in a family that cost him his brother, and then, later, cost him Remus as well.

"I think if he ever finds out I'm pretty sure I'll be the one who's attacked."

Regulus barks a bitter laugh. "Yeah, nice try, Remus, but I don't think so. You can do no wrong, when it comes to my brother—except for," he pauses and scratches his chin, "whatever you did to make him stop talking to you."

"Technically," Remus sighs, because Regulus once held his hand while he worried over an examination, "_I'm_ not speaking to him."

Regulus swallows. "Sirius did something to piss _you_ off? Fuck, what'd he do, kill a Hufflepuff?"

"I said it's none of your business."

"He did kill a Hufflepuff, then?"

"Shove off, Black."

Regulus laughs, head thrown back, and Remus remembers why he first followed Regulus into an abandoned classroom back in September.

"Do you know, I sometimes wonder if everything would have changed if Sirius had been Sorted into Slytherin?"

"How do you mean?" Remus stretches his legs in front of him. He remembers how Regulus had turned, fuming, to see Remus at the door to the classroom, how he had said, "Wrong Black, Lupin," and lifted his wand, and then dissolved into heaving sobs when Remus had Disarmed him. Of course things would have been different, if there had never been any _right_ Black for Remus.

"I just…would he be with us, do you think? Us, being the Slytherins, I mean. Or would he have become friends with you and Potter and Pettigrew, anyway?"

"Probably more of a loner." Saying it feels strange. Sirius as a loner is an odd thought, but a group of Gryffindors befriending a Slytherin is an odder one.

"Why, though? Why wouldn't you all have liked him? He would've been the same Sirius you're friends with today, even if he hadn't pleaded with the Sorting Hat to stick him with you lot."

"Well—he'd be a Slytherin. No one really crosses that boundary." Even as he says it, Remus can see Regulus is shaken.

"You did," he says, "I did."

It would be easy to go back in time with Regulus; Remus can imagine it, see it clearly in his head. But now it would taste harsher, feel more like revenge. He might shut his eyes and imagine that the body in his arms is thinner and longer. He might mouth the wrong star into a pale shoulder. And so he shakes his head and crosses his arms.

"We were shagging, Regulus. We weren't exactly mates, or anything."

Regulus slides down from the desk and turns, his face flat, eyes flicking around the room again. Before he leaves, he growls, "If Sirius finds out he'll fight me," and then he strides from the room.

Remus lets out a shaky breath. Six months after he chose Sirius, and it still hurts to tell Regulus no.

If he had chosen Regulus, Regulus would have chosen him back. Remus may not know hate and anger may be an uncomfortable companion, but he certainly recognizes the taste of regret.

:::

Shortly after Regulus leaves, James appears. He has the Marauder's Map in his fist, and he's looking nervous, hair messier than usual and lower-lip rolled between his teeth. "Why was Sirius's brother here with you?" he asks as soon as he enters the classroom.

"He just had a question."

"About what?" James perches on the desk directly in front of Remus, and Remus glances over his shoulder at the open doorway. Regulus has a habit of coming back for second rounds, particularly when the first ends unsatisfactorily, and to have him walk in on James—well, it wouldn't be the end of the world, but it wouldn't be ideal.

"Prefect stuff, you know."

James hums disbelievingly. "What're you doing down here?"

"Needed to cool off."

James steeples his fingers in an unwitting mimicry of Dumbledore and waits a few seconds before asking, "When are you going to forgive him?"

"I can't imagine forgiving him," Remus says, "I want to, and I try to, but I just can't do it."

"He's an idiot, Remus, and I understand how angry you are, but—do you really want your friendship to be over? Just like that?"

"Of course I don't wantit to. Fuck, James." Remus leans forward and fists his hands in his hair. "I can't trust him anymore, not even a little. And I don't know how to be his friend, without trusting him." He wonders at the hypocrisy of this, the fact that none of his friends should trust _him_, because once a month he explodes into a dark creature. And Sirius, especially, shouldn't trust him, because he spent eight weeks wrapped in Regulus and told no one.

"Maybe just start from—from I don't know. Start over?" James suggests, speaking slowly and Remus can tell, just from the way he hesitates, that he's nervous, anxious, scared that their friendship will never be normal again.

"Every time I look at him I see Snape and get angry again," Remus confesses. "Even when he's just sitting in class, and I glance over at him—have you ever been hurt like that, James?" So badly you change your whole view of everything, Remus wants to add, but he looks at James and sees the way his mouth is twisted and knows he can't add anything to the weight he's already pressing against him. And it's dumb, that Remus should feel so guilty about all of this, when it was Sirius who began it.

"No, I guess not." James slides from the desk. "It's just—we miss you, Moony. And Sirius—he's—I've never seen him this bad before."

It is always about Sirius, because he is the one who makes a scene. He is the star that explodes; Remus is the one that fades out of existence. In his breakdown, Remus has taken no one with him; Sirius would take as much of the world as possible, carve out a canyon the size of a planet.

"I'm sorry, Prongs." Remus slides from the desk and cuts around James's seat. He doesn't look back as he leaves the classroom, even though he probably won't see James without Sirius again for a while. The two are linked; they forgive each other everything, but begrudge almost everyone else.

:::

"Want my notes from History of Magic?" Peter asks, sliding his bag onto the table across from Remus and pulling out the chair. He flops into it, and a cloud of dust pulses up into the air—this corner of the library is almost never used, and smells of disintegrated moth wings and moldy books.

"Are they actual notes or occasional dates surrounded by doodles?" Remus responds, pulling the stack of books out of Peter's way as the other boy shakes his bag so piles of parchment fall to the table.

Peter shrugs. "I tried to take okay notes for you." He shoves a few crumpled pieces at Remus and Remus smoothes out the sheets. He feels calmed at Peter's familiar scribble, and the lists of years that march down the left margin.

"Thanks, Pete."

"Sure." Peter flicks the clasp on his bag a few times and then takes his turn. "Sirius fucked up." Concession. "I mean, we all know he's a selfish prat. He doesn't understand things." Reasoning. "Can't you just come back?" Plea.

There's the sound of someone behind the shelves beside them, and Remus glances up. He sees the top of a dark head, just ducking out of sight, and hisses, "Sirius?" But the boy who appears is Regulus, his mouth twisted in a smirk.

"Wrong one." The words cut oddly, heavy with history and sharp with truth.

"Go away, Black," Peter mimics James, his voice quieter than James's would be, but otherwise just the same. Remus wonders whether James notices this, whether Peter is aware of it; he knows Sirius does, sometimes he sits back and watches Peter try to turn himself into James, a smirk on his lips.

"I think I'd rather stay." Regulus pulls out the chair beside Remus and sits in it, back straight and tense despite his efforts to appear relaxed. "This is cozy."

"Go _away_, Black," Peter tries again, this time sounding inexplicably like a whiny Sirius.

"Tell me, Remus." Regulus turns his head to face Remus, and Remus keeps his gaze on him, even though he wants to look everywhere else. "Do you ever get bored of your friends? Especially this one, who sounds so much like my brother and Potter?"

Peter lets out an indigent squeak.

Regulus is picking at Remus like a partly healed scab. Remus understands the inclination, gets the expression in Regulus's grey eyes, and sort of wants the other boy to make him bleed. But Peter is here, looking on with eyes that sometimes see too much. "I happen to like my friends."

"Not my brother, at the moment." His eyes challenge Remus to deny it, and Remus wonders at the point of this. Regulus hadn't seemed particularly eager to be found out the day before, and Remus can't imagine that much has changed since then. "That's what the other one was saying, right? You won't forgive him, Remus?"

"'The other one''s name is Peter," Remus grounds out.

"It's a bit rich, coming from you, though," Regulus continues. "Not forgiving someone. Considering everything for which Sirius needs to forgive you."

Peter grunts at that, as if he's been punched, and Remus hisses, "What are you _doing_?"

Regulus smirks. "Playing the game, Lupin." He stands and leans in close to Remus's ear, his lips just grazing there. "I've decided a fight with Sirius might be just the thing I need."

Remus can hear his heart pounding in the silence that follows Regulus's departure. He finally looks up to see Peter staring at her, lips moving in a soundless accusation, asking, at last: "You and _Regulus_?"

:::

Peter doesn't tell Sirius, but he's stopped looking at Remus, and so Sirius and James both know that something has gone wrong. The full moon is approaching, and Remus can feel its heaviness in his blood. He wants to explode with it, wants to run away. He knows that it will hurt this month, worse than most, because of his eagerness; he'll tear himself to pieces to get out of this body and into a wild one.

James approaches him a week before the full moon, sits down beside him at breakfast. He looks at Remus's coffee and then at his mostly empty plate. And then he looks up and asks, "What will happen this month?"

He can feel Regulus staring at them from the Slytherin table. "The usual."

"That's a lie," and James sounds surprised. "You don't lie to me, Remus. To us."

Remus shrugs.

"What happened between you and Peter?" James asks, playing with the fork and knife at his place, sliding the blade through the slots on the fork.

_You don't lie to me, to us._ "He found out something about me he didn't like."

"Like what?" James's hand fists on the knife and Remus worries for a moment about it cutting him.

Remus sees Regulus approaching, over James's shoulder, and he shakes his head. "It's—look, James, it's complicated."

"Remus," James says, as Regulus comes to a stop behind him. James stiffens at the shadow that falls over the table; Remus feels an anxious knot twist in his gut.

"Potter, Remus. All right?" Regulus is torturing him, and oddly happy doing it. Remus wants to hate him.

"Go away, Black," James says, and Regulus raises his eyebrows at Remus, smirking like Sirius.

"Pettigrew said the same thing to me the other day. I didn't listen to him, either."

"Regulus," Remus pleads. "Go fight with Sirius, if you want to. Leave me out of it."

"But it'll mean so much more if you're a part of it." His voice is taunting, his eyes hard.

"Remus," James repeats, weighing the name and the way Regulus said it. "Oh."

"It's fun," Regulus says, "laying a trail for you idiots to follow. Think Sirius will work it out?"

And then Remus explodes. He throws himself up off the bench and against Regulus, his smaller but taller body hitting Regulus at the shoulders and taking him to the ground. Regulus growls, and it feels like a facsimile of their first time together, when neither was sure of what they wanted, and then Regulus's nose is bleeding and it is not like the first time at all. He has his hands fisted around Remus's throat for long enough to make breathing an effort, and then Remus gets his arm twisted away and can gulp in air as shouts surround them.

They're torn apart by magic, each held suspended in the air as McGonagall stands between them, wand out and eyes glinting.

"Remus Lupin," she says. "You—" and then she shakes her head, lets them both down, and turns to Regulus. "Go down and tell Professor Slughorn that you were fighting in the Great Hall. If he's not awake, wake him up. Lupin, with me."

James hurries after them, holding his bag and Remus's, and begins, "Professor, Black was taunting him, he started it, don't—"

McGonagall whirls and pins James with a glare, "Mister Lupin started it, Mister Potter. Return to Gryffindor Tower, please."

"But, Professor."

"Now, Mister Potter. Mister Lupin, take your bag from Mister Potter and meet me in my office, please." She continues down the corridor, and Remus reaches for his bag, his knuckles bruised and his neck hurting.

"Remus," James says. "What do I—what should I do?"

"I don't care," Remus lies.

"Sirius has to know."

Remus shrugs. "Sure."

"But do you want to tell him?"

"I'm not speaking to him." Remus slings his bag over his shoulder and turns away from James. He doesn't understand this, the strange throbbing beneath his ribs. It's like he wants to hurt everyone, but mostly Sirius.

McGonagall tells him that she is disappointed and surprised, that he needs to find new friends, takes fifteen points from Gryffindor and gives him two weeks of detention, to begin directly after the full moon.

Regulus is waiting for him when he gets out of McGonagall's office.

"You're a bastard," Remus tells him. "We were fine. Everything was fine."

"Nothing's 'fine,' Lupin. The whole world is going mad, and I'm caught on one side while my brother's on the other and you're weirdly in between us. I don't understand it—I don't get you. I still want you, you know? Even though you chose Sirius—to whom you're not even speaking." Remus inhales a shaky breath. He can feel McGonagall in her office behind them; he wonders if she's listening. "And he doesn't even know that he's got you, that there was ever a competition. It's so fucking stupid. So I want him to know." Regulus shakes his head, hair going crazy. "Because if he keeps not knowing, and I have to watch the two of you walk circles around each other, while I walk away from all of you—I want to feel as if I have fought."

"We fought. We fought a lot," Remus points out. He can feel the madness of the coming full moon, he can't keep himself contained anymore.

"It's about more than just you, Remus, you were right. I need—I need him to have a reason."

"He already has reasons, so many reasons. Fuck, he _hates_ you, hates you and everything you stand for." How harsh must he be to stop this, Remus wonders. Are there any words that will act as brakes?

"He doesn't hate me. He hates that he was once a part of this, and that now he isn't. He hates that I still am. But he doesn't hate me."

Remus shuts his eyes. "I think he does," because only a man who hates his brother could have done to Remus what Sirius did. Only a man who hates his brother could have been so blind for so long.

Only he could make Remus want so badly to be a wolf.

He leaves Regulus standing outside of McGonagall's office. He can feel the bruises working their way to the surface of his skin. He wonders whether James told Sirius.

:::

Sirius is standing outside the entrance to Gryffindor. His hands are in his pockets and he's staring down the hall towards Remus. He is pale and his eyes are dark and his hair is messy and he looks sad and hurt. He looks the way he did when his family disowned him. And Remus has the sense that he has done this to his friend, and it makes him feel sick and powerful.

"Why?" Sirius asks. His voice is small but Remus knows his hands are fists in his pockets. He wants to punch someone but he won't hit Remus yet.

The answers to that why are so overwhelming. "He's not a bad person, Sirius." And, Remus wants to say: I was lonely. You weren't there. He looked sad. I was sad. I was tired of fighting everything.

"He is, though." Sirius punches a wall. "You didn't know him growing up. He's not a _good_ person. He's got bad blood, terrible blood. He's got blood I've been fighting my whole life—and he _loves _it!"

"He doesn't love it." Because Remus may not know Regulus very well, but he knows this. "He hates it, but he's too afraid to shake it."

"You talk like—you talk like you love him."

Remus laughs. "Of course I don't love him. I'm not even seeing him anymore. He's just—fuck, Sirius, he's just lost. Just like all of us, except he's not got a way out."

"He's had so many ways out! He doesn't take them!"

Remus shakes his head. "He's not like you, you know," and there's pity there, in that tone, "he doesn't see everything the way you do. It's much harder for him."

"Because he's an imbecile."

"Because he's alone."

Sirius bursts, then, comes toward Remus as if from a spring. Remus doesn't fight back as Sirius hits him, because he's remembering how he felt after he thought about fighting Sirius, how wrong everything was.

Sirius stops when he realizes Remus isn't fighting back, steps away still breathing heavily. "Why did we fuck everything up?" he asks, the words coming out short and raspy.

Remus doesn't think he's talking about them. He's talking about Regulus and him, about them when they were children. They used to be friends; Regulus has told Remus stories about them. They got along once.

Remus shakes his head. He doesn't know. He thinks it's because the world is made for fuck-ups, but he doesn't say it.

"Fuck," Sirius spits. "Fuck. And I look at you and I see him. You and him. Why, Moony?"

"I look at you and I see Snape."

"But I didn't shag Snivellus." Sirius shivers at the thought.

"But you let him in. Why, Sirius?"

Sirius shrugs. "It wasn't exactly premeditated. He was annoying me, and you were—you're mad when you're a wolf. It's glorious and terrible. I thought it would shut him up."

"It almost ruined everything, though. You know?"

"I do know, I do. But you—you and Regulus. When did you?"

"September and October. He made me—we wouldn't have worked any longer."

"So before all this? You fucked my brother before everything?"

"I didn't—it wasn't exactly—it wasn't revenge or spite or anything to do with you."

"Except that he's my brother, and you're Remus." Sirius's hands have gone back into his pockets. "It's everything to do with me."

Remus sighs. "No, it wasn't. And it still isn't. If it were—" If it were, then how he's feeling now would be positively wrong. Even now, it's a little off.

"You're—Merlin, Remus, I've never been—I've never felt—fuck."

"Look, Sirius, we were both alone. We never—or I never—wanted to hurt you."

"You weren't alone," Sirius is shouting, now, his voice loud enough to be heard down the corridors and in Gryffindor, "You haven't been alone since I met you."

Remus shakes his head. "I've been alone every minute of my fucking life, Sirius. And the fact that you don't see that—I didn't love Regulus, but he understood me." He turns.

He can disappear in this castle as ably as the others, it's just that he usually doesn't. Sirius won't find him unless James surrenders the map. And he doesn't think he will.

:::

Remus hears about the fight from Peter the next morning, when he returns to Gryffindor Tower around six to find all but Peter's bed abandoned.

"They're in the hospital wing. Sirius attacked Regulus—James got involved," Peter explains, yawning in the middle. "Everyone'll be fine."

"Even Regulus?" Remus hates that he cares.

Peter pins him with a painfully perceptive glare, particularly for this early in the morning, and says, "Yeah, even Regulus. I think James was trying to stop Sirius from killing him. Are you all right?"

"Fine," Remus says.

"I heard the end of your argument with Sirius." Remus assumes the whole castle heard the end of their argument. "It's terrible to feel lonely. I understand."

Remus squints at him. "Thanks," he says. "Really, Pete. Thanks."

"Sure." Peter falls back against his pillow and is snoring softly in minutes. Remus gets in to bed but can't fall asleep. He wonders what Regulus has said to Sirius, if he's said anything. He wonders if the hospital wing is exploding with the Black brothers' animosity. He wonders if anything can ever be fixed.

He gets up after a few minutes and creeps from the room, reaches the hospital wing to find the doors shut and the ward silent as he undoes the lock and slips inside. Three of the beds are occupied; only James is awake, sitting up and staring at his hands in the dim morning light. He glances up at Remus.

"We're all fine," James tells him.

"No one's fine," Remus corrects, sinking to sit at the end of his cot. "I'm sorry."

"None of it is actually your fault, you know. Sirius and Regulus are bad at emotions and we're all just fuck-ups."

"But I got in the middle of them."

"You didn't mean to," James says. "Did you?"

"It was never about Sirius, until it was over."

"Did you end it?" James asks. He's scared to dig into this, Remus can see, but James has always been the bravest of them.

"We both did, I guess. He said I had to choose."

"And you chose Sirius."

Remus shrugs. He glances at the figures in the beds on either side of James. He knows sleeping Blacks, and he can see how their fingers tense on their bedsheets in identical ways: These Blacks are not asleep.

"It was never as definitive as that." Because he knows he has hurt Regulus, but he'd rather not continue hurting him.

"What was it then?" James asks.

"It was normalcy, you know? And all of you—you know me better than most people do. In different ways than Regulus did. I couldn't give that up, for something that had only been going on for two months."

"And you chose Sirius," James repeats. "All of that may be true, I guess it probably is, but first, Remus, first you chose Sirius. Before me and Peter and Regulus, you will always choose Sirius."

"So will you," Remus says, soft, as if speaking lower will cushion the words.

"But not in the same way," James points out. "Not before Lily."

Sirius's hands fist on his sheets. Remus feels sick, like layers of skin have been pulled away and he can see the redness underneath.

"Which Sirius knows, or should know. Sirius should know a lot more than he acts like he does." James has turned his head to look at his falsely sleeping best friend.

Sirius opens his eyes and looks at them, then, hazy grey circles like dawn light. He's angry and upset and Remus supposes he still sees Regulus when he looks at him; especially now, because Regulus is in the bed beyond them. "It's impossible to be happy and know anything."

Regulus laughs, then. "It's impossible to be happy and _not _know anything, too, you imbecile. This whole world is unhappy—you just need to figure out a way to be happy in it, in spite of it. And you have the easiest way of anyone, you're just too fucking terrified to take it."

"What do you mean, the _easiest _way? I don't even have a family."

"You do, though," Regulus's voice sounds the way it used to when he'd wake up beside Remus, shaking at three in the morning. "You have a much better family than mine—than your old one." Regulus has sardonic down. "You traded in one brother for two, and got Remus as a bonus."

Remus stands. "I need to get out of here. I'm, look, I'm sorry."

"Remus," Sirius says. "Don't do anything—don't do anything stupid."

"No, I wouldn't, would I? You've already got stupid pretty well covered."

"Remus," Sirius says again. "You—I need you to not be angry at me anymore."

"I need another week. Give me—just give me that."

He brushes a hand over the end of Regulus's bed as he leaves. He can't think in finalities and endings, but everything is still always moving on. It's maddening.

:::

The full moon and Remus is alone, because he told James that he would kill Padfoot and Prongs can barely handle him on his own and Wormtail would get under his paws.

So, an explosion: blood vessels breaking and reforming; limbs torn and broken and bent; claws and paws and fur everywhere; screams into howls; memories memories _memories_; Snape, Regulus, Sirius, Snape, Sirius, Regulus, Sirius, Sirius; blessed blankness; moonlight on the floor; scratching and biting and wood and blood, his own blood; teeth on fur on skin on blood on bone; more moonlight; mad moonlight; howl into scream; pain.

Morning, eventually. Scabs already forming. Thoughts coming in hesitant blips. Fingers pressing nails into palms. Alone. Lonely. Scream, just scream, no howl. (Sirius, Regulus, Snape, alone.)

:::

Sirius finds him out on the grounds, near the Lake but far away from the others who have gathered there.

"It's been a week," Sirius says. "How'd the moon go?"

Remus shrugs, but shifts so Sirius can sit beside him.

"Was it bad?"

"I've had worse, but not many."

"Oh." If Remus were Sirius he would apologize again. Sirius rightly assumes he doesn't need to. "Well, you survived it. And next month we'll be with you again." And here's the hesitation, the suggestion that Sirius is still unsure of his place in Remus's life. "Right?"

"Yeah," Remus agrees. "Of course."

Sirius leans back and stares up at the sky. The sun's out today, unusually, and it makes his veins stand out blue on his forearms.

"I never expected our seventh year to go like this." Sirius isn't looking at him, so Remus joins him in looking at the sky.

"Me neither." He counts the seconds and gets to fifty before adding, "Can I ask you a question?"

"Always," Sirius says, although Remus knows it's a guarded always, one that probably encompasses much less than Remus would like.

"All right." Remus counts another fifty. "If I had come up to you in September and told you I was seeing Regulus, what would you have said?"

Sirius stiffens beside him. "I don't think I would have said much. I probably would have hit you and then gone to hit him." He sighs, heavy. "I still don't understand it, Remus. I don't understand it at all. How could you—how could you be so lonely that you'd choose my brother?"

"I didn't choose him. I can't imagine you'll ever understand."

"What do you mean by that?" and now Sirius is looking at him, eyes sharp and hard. "Do you mean I don't know what it is to be lonely? That I don't know how to—that I can't—what do you mean, Remus?"

"I mean that he's your brother and I'm your friend and so the thought of us together is rightfully disgusting and also that you have such a horrible history with your family—and the fact is that I overlooked all that by seeing Regulus, but you aren't able to overlook any of it, so it colors everything that happened between him and me, and so you won't be able to understand why I went to him."

"Did you ever think that you loved him?" Sirius asks, almost exactly the way he had asked Remus if he loved Regulus weeks before.

"No, I never did."

"Why not?"

"I didn't think I could love anyone," Remus says. "Can we please never talk about this again? I know you're uncomfortable and I—"

"No, what do you mean? How could _you_ not love anyone?"

Remus wishes to rewind time. He wishes to be back in the hospital wing, to put a stop to these thoughts as they unwind between him and Sirius.

"I said I thought I couldn't. Merlin, I don't know, Sirius. This sucks, you know?" He presses his hands to his face. "It really sucks. Because I thought I couldn't love anyone so I gave in and shagged your brother, _your _brother, which is stupid, so stupid, and not because of your history with him, not really, but because the closest I'd ever come to loving anyone was loving you. So even though none of it was about you I didn't go about liking Regulus in the right way and then we ended it and everything was fine and normal and then you went and betrayed me," he inhales, "you _did_, and that hurt, that hurt worse than anything Regulus had ever done, and I thought, well, if he can hurt me like that, then I probably do love him, and what a backwards way of working it out."

Sirius doesn't say anything. Remus counts to fifty and he still doesn't say anything. Remus counts to fifty again, and he still hasn't said anything. The silence around them is getting beneath Remus's skin, and he needs to move, except that Sirius has reached out and has his hand on Remus's thigh, his fingers pressing into the cloth of his jeans just above his knee, and if he moves then he'll dislodge Sirius's grip, and he doesn't want that.

"That's not fair," Sirius says. "That you found out because I hurt you."

"I mean, I guess I suspected before, when Regulus and I split. I guess I knew then, but I hoped I'd grow out of it."

"Why? Why would you hope to grow out of it? Fuck." His grip is tight on Remus's leg.

"Because you don't love me back," simplest, easiest confession in the world.

"Why?"

"I don't know. I'm unlovable? I'm a werewolf. I slept with your brother. I have no backbone and am terrible at saying what I want. I'm altogether not a very good person, and I imagine I'm a bad person to love."

"I don't know, Moony." Sirius hasn't taken his hand away, and he's moved closer to Remus. They're pressed against each other, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee. "I find it ridiculously easy to love you."

Remus tilts his head, looks at Sirius. "I'm not a good person," he repeats.

"I'm not either, and yet you still love me." Sirius presses his forehead against Remus's. "Besides, I think you're good. Better than me, anyway."

"I don't know how—" but Sirius cuts him off.

"Remus, shut up, please." Sirius kisses him. Lips dry and chin rough and hands oddly gentle. He sighs. Remus leans forward, and their lips part. Sirius tastes like a stale cigarette, like coffee, like the Gryffindor common room. Remus wants to be closer. Sirius draws him in.


End file.
